Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

Sad to know you fell into the trap too Adi.
Save a wee bit more and please revert back to stock. Would save a lot more pocket money going further!

Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

I think it's time i butt in.
My Pulsar200NS has been, as they popularly say, Joeled. Its got the cylinder head mod, a stock replacement simota air filter and a bigger main jet. Now this is the so called 'level1' in our tooner's books. Here's the mail i received from him.

Notice the words: world of difference, blistering acceleration, amazing top end and last but not least, 12-15% improvement in power.

Now i was advised by [MENTION=59533]Rakesh Rok[/MENTION] to not go for this. He said its always better to keep the bike stock.

But adamant me wanted that extra punch, that extra grunt and 12-15% translates to a very meaty hp count indeed. So i too took the plunge. Mysore is my hometown, 150 km away from the 'racehouse'.

I was quoted 10k as is evident from the image. Now im a second year engineering student who managed to save that out of pocket money off many months.

And then came the D day. All the work took nearly 7.5 hours, understandably because the man was preparing for his racing at another city. I had to tell him to hurry a number of times as i had to reach Mysore by dinnertime atleast. After what seemed to be forever, i received my bike at 6pm. On startup, the response was amazing. Cold start was better, idle was stable and throttle response was crisp. It felt good indeed. Made my payment and left.

It was around 8 pm when i was halfway through to mysore when the bike suddenly shut off. The tank was half filled. I couldnt figure out what was wrong. 5-6 missed calls later, our tooner tells me to check a few things with the intake which i did and everything was fine. Sometime later the bike miraculously came to life on cranking. It seemed like petrol wasnt flowing into the carb. I had my doubts but i was enjoying the little (less than expected) powergain that i had. But lo and behold. Shut off again. This happened 5 more times before reaching home. [MENTION=59533]Rakesh Rok[/MENTION] was of help to me indeed.

It turns out it was the case of the breather pipe for the tank getting stuck between the tank itself and the chassis. Got that sorted out but i refrained from having an argument for the sole reason that he was extremely busy that day.

Three days later i faced a terrible lag at ~3k rpm. I sighed wondering if the carb diaphragm issue (common with 200NS) crept up again but just to be sure, got a puc check done and wow. The engine was running callously lean. The mechanics at race concepts had simply fit the big main jet and let it run that way. No tuning done at all. Imagine giving the afr screw a whole 5 turns towards the richer side to achieve perfect tune.

For some reason the afr leans out every 1000 kms and is happening till date.

3000 kms later i got the air filter cleaned but noticed exceptionally high amount of dust in the intake box, though my city is very dust-free indeed. And it was then that i noticed that the airfilter box was haphazardly cut up to fix the stock replacement filter (made for the N250 originally) and raw air was going in. It was not untill 2000 kms more that i finally found the time to perform a diy on the filter box to make a snug fit. And right after i did it, a sudden drop in performance back to stock levels! All i did was cover up the perimeter of the panel filter to avoid further leakage of raw air! So this means no noticeable powergain from the head mod, no world of difference (which was pretty evident right after modification), no blistering acceleration and definitely no 12-15% power increase, and all my money was almost a complete waste. The only saving grace is the sprocket work which i did by myself, which gives me enough torque to hit high speeds quickly, and enough torque to defend myself and my bike for the sake of the bragging rights of owning a Joeled bike.

Next problem faced was of coolant leakage from the bore. If i were asked to do something as simple as getting a bore packing from the service center, i would have, to be used as a replacement while refitting the bore. Instead they used some fevibond or some crap to keep the upper engine in one piece. This paste, though is pretty good, gets easily dissolved in coolant.
Remedy: open up the upper engine again, fix the paper seal and put it back. For this job i had to visit RC again and it was done free of cost. But yet again the breather tube issue began cropping up. Unexpected shutoffs. This time me and tooner had an argument and he was like 'why do you blame us everytime something goes wrong man, something must be wrong with your bike' was what i got. I decided, that was it. Thankfully this time i was in city limits and easily got it rectified.

To summarise my experience, the only positive outcome i had was the easy cold starts, stable idle and crisp throttle response. Otherwise, its been a major headache with quite a notable number of service center visits. Heck, those people would give out a big smile when they'd see me! Thankfully no other major issues faced, and im considering getting the carburetor cleaned up, just in case.

I feel now, that i should have waited for a wee bit more time and tried out goodies from NMW performance, blore. They have some amazing quality stuff with good reviews going about, everywhere.

Im not sure if i should repent or be glad that im not the only dissatisfied RC customer.

Sent from my GT-S5360 using Tapatalk 2

Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

@ Novice...I fully agree with all the points you had mentioned in your post...Thanks for your Kind words,I am flattered to hear that you had followed my posts before..
Wish you speedy recovery and Safe ride..

Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

Thank you for your kind words.

psr sir you were definitely more than 'some use'. I had been following you throughout the xbhp thread even before this fiasco.

The thing about hot rodding is like, if you do it or don't do it, you are gonna regret sometime.

The REAL thing is the true spirit in which you carry on or leave it and forget it as a bad phase of your life.

Honestly I do regret about doing this mod on my FZ. But alternatively I think its good I did it and learned so very much about this endeavor.

Because if it hadn't been on the FZ, we wouldn't have known the Tooner's true nature of business or personality, for that matter.

And MAYBE I could have done something with the higher capacity bikes like the Duke 200 or later on which I would have bought.

At that time this fiasco would have resulted in a much larger hole in the pocket as well as in my heart(keeping in mind the big bikes).

So then I would have definitely never attempt hot rodding again. But now I am aware what it is and the correct way to approach it.

Coming to NY17, yes you are right that there are some bikes with the dubious kits that are running fine.

But these are far and few. Not worth mentioning that the kits are a success. It has to be the other way round.

These kits are running on pure luck and some common sense of the bike owners. Nothing special from the Tooner. Got it?

I am saying this coz of first hand knowledge that my kit would have blown too, if not for some self thinking and quick action help from our senior riders.

Instead, according to the tooner's claims of in house development and reliability the failure rate shouldn't have been what its in reality.

The thing that irritates and burns me to the core is the pure lack of know how by our tooner about his own kits.

There is not an iota of effort in the after sales. Half the kits blow up there itself. The rest are left to fend for themselves on good luck.

There reliability of the machine depends on how much you have tinkered with the internals.

Also if you compare the price/bhp of hot roddes machines with the stock ones, we can never justify that investment rationally.

Its for the fun and love of the work. That's the truth to me.

cheers...

Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

Novice wish you a speedy recovery.

There is a some misconceptions regarding concepts of tuning and working of single cylinder engines.

I wont sit and pinpoint them now, but from what I have seen some of the users of these performance parts and their usage, there are some things wrong on their part too.

I also agree with the parts from RC of which the pics have been put up are defective.
But I have also seen many users that, don't give a damn about their bikes, no start up idling, proper scheduled maintenance and all.

Also what Joel has stated is not proper of expecting bulletproof reliability.
But I myself have seen examples of his bikes still running strong R15s and 220s done numerous trips,tours & also of those gone kaput.

Don't expect same reliability as stock unless u are ready to spend a more on maintenance compared to stock bike.

Joel really needs to improve his customer support and parts quality.

Also when you compare price/bhp of hotrodded bikes to stock it will never be the comparable.
But the fun of owning and riding such a souped up machine is completely different.

PS: I know a guy who has spent so much on his RXZ that if he saved all that money up he could have bought a Ninja 650 and accessorize it completely.
There are many like him who do it for the love of it.

Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

Novice ....sad to know of the injury to the Eye and that you had not got the vision in the eye so far.
Thanks for thinking that I was of some use and help in your endeavor of Hot rodding .
As someone active in Xbhp for the past years, I had heard what ever you had posted , many times over.....Still many went for the mods inspite of my warning , only to come back to me for help or would simply throw the whole kit and chalk it up to a bad experience.Many had bought higher cc bikes, which was what I had requested them to do, instead of investing huge amounts of money in modifications that were dubious in their claim.

Glad you had also upgraded your ride ,and have peace of mind.
Good Luck to you
My prayers for your speedy recovery.

Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

Hello guys. I am back from my hot rodding hiatus now.

Have read all the posts since my last post on this thread. I thought now i ought to reply lest being branded an absconder.

First thing first, I was away coz my right eye got injured and as I am typing this, at this very moment, I am partially blind.
Had a small work accident but it left a big scar on my life. My fate just loves to hit and hit and hit me.

Mind you, please, I am not writing this for you people sympathies but to clear the air about my absence for such a long time. PERIOD.
Especially when all the senior riders have jumped in and shared their stories. Also coz of a new development at my end which
shall be revealed later.

I too need to conclude about my side of the story.

It was nice to read more people had come out of the closet to share about their tragic losses w.r.t a certain tuner(tooner as the accepted word now).
Also it was heartbreaking to know that the number of people being duped by this tooner seems to be endless.

Before starting this thread, I too got excited whenever I got to read about the tooner's bullet proof reliable kits doing wonders in various threads.

So I said to myself I too need to get those kits and enter the big bad world of hot rodding.

Then the journey started. I initiated some e-mails to the tooner who would be ever busy in his races and tours.
He wouldn't receive any calls and would ask to only e-mail, if he did take a call then it be a great favour and would keep the conversation very very short.

All this didn't ring any bells in my head at that time coz I was blindly in his faith and just wanted to be another one of his beautifully scripted stories. -- ALARM 1
The desperation then leaded to interaction with those other riders and the faith being reinforced.

Then emboldened by those reviews I took the plunge and asked him for the way forward to receiving his goodies.
He said first the full money and then only the goodies. Like all right minded persons I said half before delivery and half later.
For this he agreed and after the first payment he sent me only some of the parts that were cleverly of lesser value than my first installment.
And said he would be sending the rest of the parts soon, as he was busy in the races but I was asked to not delay the remaining payment. -- ALARM 2
And indeed the rest of the parts came only after the remaining payment was made. Obviously duffer(means Myself).

So forward I go ignoring those two alarms. So all this process of starting a dialogue with Mr. Tooner and me receiving the goods took almost 5-6 months.
In between this our playboy shv18 (sorry couldn't resist) jumps in and starts preparing for his journey into hot rodding.
Then I get them assembled with all precautions and precision about which I had interacted with our senior riders like abhimanyu31, psr ji and others as well .

Then it was that dreaded camshaft stitch noise era. It had started. The tooner asked me to get the decomp unit out so that the noise would slowly subside.
Off goes the decomp unit but not the noise. But our tooner assures me it would go away with time and so did his assurances. -- ALARM 3
Still not suspicious of his marketing skills I went about town happily riding with that irritating noise as onlookers took me for a fool and a cheapo FZ owner.

By now the reverse crank also became prominent and I brought this to his notice and was assured these would be happening very less frequently and not damage
the engine in the long run. So all was hunky dory again to with your stupid protagonist. -- ALARM 4

All this time I was on my stock carb. So the tooner told me to get the 29mm CV carb from him and feel the bike fly more freely.
I said yes and yet again sent him exorbitant money for the normal bajaj pulsar ug4 carb which came with a 112.5 main standard jet.
But our tooner sent kit needs a main jet of size 117.5 or more in his own words. Yet he sends the carb as it is. -- ALARM 5

And the story goes on with never ending alarms, above being the most prominent ones. Then through greater interaction within me and shv18 we
sensed something was not right. But by this time we had already put 35k and 40k worth of hard earned money into this deep s**thole.

Me not being a good writer, shv18 started writing about our collective experience in a very precise manner. This inflammed our Tooner to no end.
So he starts off with FACTS about how he does all the hard work and all we do is sit and critcize him. By this time all the after sales support had come to a naught.
Even then the tooner had the audacity to ask me to buy a salvaged inline carb for a gracious discounted amount of Rs.5000 and filter extra. (my God why didnt you
kill me and shv18 already for being such fools and blind)

ALL this drama happened only coz of our ignorance about hot rodding and the effort that goes into it. And not into the sham marketing strategy called
RC concepts. We learned it the hard way that there is no easy way to success. No one else is gonna do your work.

All this 'plug and play' and 'bullet proof realiablity' is not possible with even the best tuners. The reason being simple.
You are doing somethig more and beyond what the machine is capable of handling.
The sooner we realised it, we put a cap on the expenses to be done beyond this point.

And hence now decided to not pursue the FZ hot rodding. I am back to the bone stock FZ i had from the start and all those bullet proof parts are lying
in my garage gathering dust and rust. They will keep reminding me of my blunders during hot rodding.

But more importantly they shall remind me of what I have learned from this experience and the correct approach to this whole hot rodding thing.
From now on I am certain that I cannot be wrong in my approach to modifying anything. There could be hits and miss. But the correct way would lead
us to the setination we ought to reach.

During this entire phase I had the privilege of having made friends with many of you good people and would like to thank seniors including but not limited
to psr ji, abhimanyu31, stefanm and others.

And so as a part of my never ending quench for power and the lessons learnt from my above endeavor I upgraded to a more powerful machine. The Duke 200.
During this deciosion making I had kept shv18 and Mr.Vikram from motozone in the loop.

Both of them were happy. The FZ was passed on to my younger cousin who came to legal driving age just now.
And we shall be discussing on how to move on with the Duke.

Of course I would be doing hot rodding even now. But the difference now would be the correct approach and knwoledge first hand.
There would be no unnecessary plug and play parts installed. Coz then there would be nothing bullet proof if I did so.
Everything would be calculated and think upon it twice before doing anything.
We shall start off with small and non harmful mods with respect to the engine.

More on this shall be discussed at a later stage. As of now I am really thankful to all you people who made this thread som uch informative and useful
to everyone alike. Thanks.

cheers...

Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

I am very much aware of the risks involved with modding Puneeth. I have spent close to 1 lac till date on my FZ JFYI . I have had my bad experiences as well. I am not denying any of those either. The line that you have quoted me was in fact said by shv18, NOT ME . I realised the for the fact that in greed of more power, I was indeed ruining it even worse.

Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

Thank you @stefanm for sharing your experience.

Cheers,

Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

I agree with the content and spirit of what you have posted.

We live by our choice and decisions.

Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

Sir,

I have decided not to reply or entertain anything else after this post. This thread is an open book, has everything in it : experience, logs, data and technical explanation for all those who are interested.

Every person has been gifted free will, an ability to think and have the decision making capabilities. I have already acknowledged my earlier mistakes in public and i sincerely believe i don't have to keep on justifying anything anymore..

I hope we do get to see more riders sharing their long term experience with hot roding and in that process if collectively we are able to share and learn from each other, i would be glad to contribute more.


Cheers,

Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

Shv18..save your latest post, since I have a feeling you may have to post it again later...

Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

@Puneeth max and @Team Torque: Before commenting anything on my behalf, i would first request both of you gentlemen to go through the pages of the thread see the report logs properly. If you would have taken the time reading some of the recommended books on the "proper way of hot roding" on this thread, you wouldn't have made the remarks earlier.

Gas flow porting/Head Porting and Polishing is nothing but the process making the flow of the AF charge into the combustion chamber better. The video links below should give you an idea of what exactly is done in the process:

Cylinder Head 106 - Casting & Porting Tech - YouTube


Classic Car Porting Heads for Power - YouTube



As the video links above suggest, during the process of sand mould casting of an an engine head, a lot of excess metal/ casting marks are left out inside which is not cleaned due to cost factor and mass production. With the process of Head port and polishing based on the nature of the build, the tuner gets rid of these extra metal bumps inside the head and based on calculations tries and improve the flow of the AF charge, thus making the engine volumetrically as efficient as possible. The whole game here is to make the flow AF charge as better as possible.

In Noob terms, imagine a group of riders going from from point A to point B and riding on Yamuna express highway or a butter smooth road where one can really throttle hard to reach the destination as quickly as possible and in another case a group of riders taking pot holed riddled roads to reach the same destination point B.

Now who will reach their destination faster? Here:

* Riders are the AF charge
* Head porting reflects the butter smooth highways.
* And the destination is the combustion chamber

So in theory, better the flow of charge = More fuel and air inside the combustion chamber = more power and more efficient engine. However, the trick here is to get things right. A wrongly ported head will reduce the speed of the of the AF or even block it thus starving the engine of fuel and air mixture. As a result, reducing the overall power output and efficiency of the engine.

My experience of first The Race Concept's ported head:



Pic 1: RC ported head.

In very basic language, if you look at the image above, one will notice the quality of work done is same as the valve recess marks left out on @abhimanyu31 's shared piston image. The intake and the exhaust ports also had uneven surfaces and the amount of metal that was shaved off was done without calculating the rate of flow from the carburettor to the intake port. Thus, as some of my earlier pages would reflect no matter how many variations of bigger jets were tried on my vehicle, the spark plug would always show a leaner mixture, knocking was predominant and the engine heat was quite evident.

Finally when we bolted on Motozone's version of their prototype ported head, without any alterations done with the jetting or the fuel requirement, the AF charge to the cylinder improved drastically and it also reflected on the spark plug colour after plug chop tests were conducted. All this information along with data has been logged in the earlier pages of the thread. I don't know whether both of you gentlemen consider this a clear evidence but common sense tells me that the latter tuning house knows what they are doing in comparison to the Tooner.

For a street build; If done correctly, a combination of head porting along with a good street cam will improve the performance without compromising on the life and reliability of the engine; something which the parts supplier has no experience of.

Coming back to my recommendation of a certain combo of ported Head + Cam + CDI. It is purely based on my experience with the quality of work that was observed at the installation, during the usage of the product on my vehicle and finally honestly reflected by the Motozone team in letting me know what can i expect and what will i lose out on in comparison to the stock set up.

These kits are also backed up by their after sales service and support which if one checks out the history, is non-existent with RC.

In the end, my recommendation for Motozone kits are specifically for a hot roding enthusiast who understands a thing or two about what to expect out of such work, the cost for per bhp increase and what is the nature of the build he is looking for. For a simple street build without altering anything by installing a BB kit or anything else, this is one of the simplest mods one can start with which doesn't hamper the life of the engine. As the earlier pages on the thread suggest: It is not a marketing campaign for Noobs to go ahead, purchase kits in the pursuit of power without spending much from their wallet. But I do hope after reading this thread most of the Noobs by now know a thing or two about proper hot roding, how a carburettor functions etc.

I am not putting a gun on anyone's head to force them and make a purchase of the same. In reality as per my experience, i now know that there exists a proper tuning house instead of a parts supplier who know their job and don't fleece their customers. Hence, the same has been shared on this thread for anyone interested in taking the route of hot roding without getting their hands dirty and letting a professional take over the job knowing that they won't be fleeced like in the case of the Tooner with the state of the art (read FART) semi forged pistons developed inhouse which blow up in a very short span..

I hope this clarifies everything.


Cheers,

Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18

I hardly think he was advertising, he was enthusiastic, like someone who gets a new toy. Whatever he experienced, he laid out in black and white for the world to see. I agree, someone who wanted to go in for a "Plug and Pray kit" might have been minded to do so after his initial reviews, but he hardly asked people to go buy it. I read reviews of helmets, gloves and other riding gears (to give an example). Some are very glowing, some are not. It is up to me to decide what is right for me and then go ahead.
Another example is using HDEO's in gasoline engines. I started using Shell Rimula R4 after reading all the pros (and no cons) about it, not just in this forum, but other forums as well. No one forced me to go ahead with using those, there was a very clear warning stated "Use at your own risk" by senior members.

As for your second paragraph, totally agreed, and that is the conclusion [MENTION=32641]shv18[/MENTION] also posted. The time, money and effort spent in the bike was astounding. At least, he persisted, where others just gave up and didn't come back to these forums to give their feedback.

Finally, this thread was very very informative, not just because of the information shared, but the way it was presented, everything was laid out in such a way that even a layman could understand the drawbacks of this kind of engine modification.

Re: The POWERHOUSE Fz18


Oh no..I remember when we met last time i told you and Rakesh i was facing problems with Tooner and the FFE. Still you got into the trap